Glossary of Literary & Poetic Terms allegory: A story in which people, things, and events have another meaning. alliteration: The repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginning of words. allusion: A reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well-known historical or literary event, person, or work. ambiguity: Multiple meanings a literary work may communicate, especially two meanings that are incompatible. antagonist: A person or force which opposes the protagonist in a literary work. apostrophe: Direct address, usually to someone or something that is not present. assonance: The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. attitude: A speaker's, author's, or character's disposition toward or opinion of a subject. autobiography: The story of a person's life written by himself or herself. ballad meter: A four-line stanza rhymed abcb with four feet in lines one and three and three feet in lines two and four. biography: The story of a person's life written by someone other than the subject of the work. blank verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Character: A person, or any thing presented as a person, e. g., a spirit, object, animal, or natural force, in a literary work. Characterization: The method a writer uses to reveal the personality of a character in a literary work Climax: The decisive moment in a drama, the climax is the turning point of the play to which the rising action leads. Comedy: A literary work which is amusing and ends happily. Conclusion: Also called the Resolution" the conclusion is the point in a drama to which the entire play has been leading. Concrete Poetry: A poem that visually resembles something found in the physical world. Conflict: In the plot of a drama, conflict occurs when the protagonist is opposed by some person or force. connotation: The implications of a word or phrase, as opposed to its exact meaning (denotation). convention: A device of style or subject matter so often used that it becomes a recognized means of expression. Consonance: The repetition of consonant sounds with differing vowel sounds in words near each other in a line or lines of poetry. Couplet: A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming. dactyl: A metrical foot of three syllables: an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables. denotation: The dictionary meaning of a word, as opposed to connotation. details: items or parts that make up a larger picture or story. devices of sound: The techniques of deploying the sound of words, especially in poetry. Among devices of sound are rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia. The devices are used for many reasons, including creating a general effect of pleasant or of discordant sound, imitating another sound, or reflecting a meaning. Dialogue: In drama, a conversation between characters.

diction: Word choice — specifically, any word that is important to the meaning and the effect of a passage. didactic: Explicitly instructive. digression: The use of material unrelated to the subject of a work. Dramatic Monologue: In literature, the occurrence of a single speaker saying something to a silent audience. elegy: A solemn, sorrowful poem or meditation about death in general or specifically for one who is dead. end-stopped: A line with a pause at the end. Lines that end with a period, comma, colon, semicolon, exclamation point, or question mark are end-stopped lines. Enlightenment: A philosophical movement of the eighteenth century that celebrated reason — clarity of thought and statement, scientific thinking, and a person's ability to perfect oneself. Leading figures of the Enlightenment include Voltaire, Pope, Swift, and Kant. epic: A long, narrative poem that describes the history of a nation, community, or race. epigram: A pithy saying, often using contrast. The epigram is also a verse form, usually brief and pointed. euphemism: A figure of speech using indirection to avoid offensive bluntness, such as "deceased" for "dead" or "remains" for "corpse." Exposition: of the play. Fable:

In drama, the presentation of essential information regarding what has occurred prior to the beginning

A brief tale designed to illustrate a moral lesson.

Falling Action:

The falling action is the series of events which take place after the climax.

figurative language : Writing that uses figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, and irony. Flashback: A reference to an event which took place prior to the beginning of a story or play. foot: A single rhythmical unit of verse free verse: Poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical. Foreshadowing: In drama, a method used to build suspense by providing hints of what is to come. genre: The term used to categorize art, film, music, poetry, and other literary works based on style, content, or technique. Common literary genres include tragedy, comedy, lyric, and satire. grotesque: Characterized by distortions or incongruities. Haiku: A Japanese poetic form which originated in the sixteenth century consisting of three lines: five syllables in the first and third lines, and seven syllables in the second line. heroic couplet: Two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit. hexameter: A line containing six feet. hyperbole: Deliberate exaggeration, overstatement. iamb: A two-syllable foot with an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. The iamb is the most common foot in English poetry. imagery: The images of a literary work; the sensory details of a work; the figurative language of a work. internal rhyme: Rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end. irony: A figure of speech in which intent and actual meaning differ.

The term irony implies a discrepancy.

jargon: The special language of a profession or group. The term jargon usually has pejorative associations, with the implication that jargon is evasive, tedious, and unintelligible to outsiders. The writings of the lawyer and the literary critic are both susceptible to jargon.

lament: A poem that expresses grief, not necessarily about death Legend: literal: Not figurative; accurate to the letter; matter of fact or concrete. lyrical: Songlike; characterized by emotion, subjectivity, and imagination. Lyric Poem: A short poem wherein the poet expresses an emotion or illuminates some life principle. Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly Buzz-When I Died" is a lyric poem wherein the speaker, on a deathbed expecting death to appear in all its grandeur, encounters a common housefly instead. metaphor: A figurative use of language in which a comparison is expressed without the use of a comparative term like "as," "like," or "than." A simile would say, "Night is like a black bat;" a metaphor would say, "the black bat night." meter: The pattern of repetition of stressed (or accented) and unstressed (or unaccented)syllables in a line of verse. Lines of verse that connect one or more feet. Mood: The atmosphere or feeling created by a literary work, partly by a description of the objects or by the style of the descriptions. A work may contain a mood of horror, mystery, holiness, or childlike simplicity, to name a few, depending on the author's treatment of the work. motif: An element that serves as a theme, which is developed further and recurs throughout the work. Myth: An unverifiable story based on a religious belief. The characters of myths are gods and goddesses, or the offspring of the mating of gods or goddesses and humans. Some myths detail the creation of the earth, while others may be about love, adventure, trickery, or revenge. In all cases, it is the gods and goddesses who control events, while humans may be aided or victimized. It is said that the creation of myths were the method by which ancient, superstitious humans attempted to account for natural or historical phenomena. Narrative Poem: A poem which tells a story. Usually a long poem, sometimes even book length, the narrative may take the form of a plotless dialogue or may consist of a series of incidents. narrative techniques: The methods involved in telling a story. Novel:

A fictional prose work of substantial length.

omniscient point of view: The vantage point of a story in which the narrator can know, see, and report whatever he or she chooses. The narrator is free to describe the thoughts of any of the characters, to skip about in time or place, or to speak directly to the reader. onomatopoeia: The use of words whose sound suggests their meaning. Examples are "buzz," "hiss," or "honk." oxymoron: A combination of opposites; the union of contradictory terms. parable: A story designed to suggest a principle, illustrate a moral, or answer a question. Parables are allegorical stories. paradox: A statement that seems to be self-contradicting but, in fact, is true. parody: A composition that imitates the style of another composition normally for comic effect. pentameter: A line containing five feet. The iambic pentameter is the most common line in English verse written before 1950. personification: A figurative use of language that endows the nonhuman (ideas, inanimate objects, animals, abstractions) with human characteristics. Plot:

The structure of a story. Or the sequence in which the author arranges events in a story.

poetry: A form of expressive writing that uses rhythm, meaning, and sound to convey the writer's experience and perceptions. prose: Ordinary language that is written or spoken. Prose differs from poetry in that it has a variety of rhythms and reflects the patterns of everyday speech. Prose isn't divided into verses or stanzas.

point of view: Any of several possible vantage points from which a story is told. The point of view may be omniscient, limited to that of a single character, or limited to that of several characters. The teller may use the first person or the third person Protagonist: The hero or central character of a literary work. reliability: A quality of some fictional narrators whose word the reader can trust. Resolution: The part of a story or drama which occurs after the climax and which establishes a new norm, a new state of affairs-the way things are going to be from then on. resources of language: A general phrase for the linguistic devices or techniques that a writer can use. rhetorical question: A question asked for effect, not in expectation of a reply. No reply is expected because the question presupposes only one possible answer. rhetorical techniques: The devices used in effective or persuasive language. The number of rhetorical techniques, like that of the resources of language, is long and runs from apostrophe to zeugma. The more common examples include devices like contrast, repetitions, paradox, understatement, sarcasm, and rhetorical question. rhyme royal: A seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, used by Chaucer and other medieval poets. Rhyme: In poetry, a pattern of repeated sounds. In end rhyme, the rhyme is at the end of the line. When one of the rhyming words occurs in a place in the line other than at the end, it is called Internal rhyme. Rhythm:

Recurrences of stressed and unstressed syllables at equal intervals, similar to meter.

Rising Action: The part of a drama which begins with the exposition and sets the stage for the climax. satire: Writing that seeks to arouse a reader's disapproval of an object by ridicule. A piece of literature designed to ridicule the subject of the work. While satire can be funny, its aim is not to amuse, but to arouse contempt. scansion: The act of scanning (or analyzing) a line of verse based on feet and accent (strong and weak). sensibility: An eighteenth century approach to truth that relied on one's feelings — not on reason. setting: The background to a story; the physical location, time, and place of a play, story, or novel. Short Story: A short fictional narrative. simile: A directly expressed comparison; a figure of speech comparing two objects, usually with "like," "as," or "than." It is easier to recognize a simile that a metaphor because the comparison is explicit: my love is like a fever; my love is deeper than a well; my love is as dead as a doornail. soliloquy: A speech in which a character who is alone speaks his or her thoughts aloud. A monologue also has a single speaker, but the monologuist speaks to others who do not interrupt. sonnet: Normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem. The conventional Italian, or Petrachan, sonnet is rhymed abba, abba, cde, cde; the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg. stanza: Usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme. stereotype: A conventional pattern, expression, character, or idea. strategy (or rhetorical strategy): The management of language for a specific effect. The strategy or rhetorical strategy of a poem is the planned placing of elements to achieve an effect. structure: The framework, or arrangement of materials within a work; the relationship of the parts of a work to the whole; the logical divisions of a work. The most common principles of structure are series (A, B, C, D, E), contrast (A vs. B, C vs. D, E vs. A), and repetition (AA, BB). The most common units of structure are — play: scene, act; novel: chapter; poem: line, stanza. style: The mode of expression in language; the characteristic manner of expression of an author. Many elements contribute to style, such as diction, syntax, figurative language, imagery, selection of detail, sound effects, and tone. "Devices of style," "narrative techniques," "rhetorical techniques," "stylistic techniques," and "resources of language" are all phrases that call for a consideration of more than one technique.

stichomythia:

type of dialogue that occurs when the dialogue takes the form of a verbal duel between characters

Suspense: Suspense in fiction results primarily from two factors: the reader's identification with and concern for the welfare of a convincing and sympathetic character, and an anticipation of violence. syllogism: A form of reasoning in which two statements are made and a conclusion is drawn from them. A syllogism begins with a major premise ("All tragedies end unhappily.") followed by a minor premise ("Hamlet is a tragedy.") and a conclusion (Therefore, "Hamlet ends unhappily."). symbol: Something that is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else. Winter, darkness, and cold are real things, but in literature they are also likely to be used as symbols of death. Symbolism: A device in literature where an object represents an idea. syntax: The structure of a sentence; the arrangement of words in a sentence. terza rima: A three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc. tetrameter: A line of four feet. theme: The main thought expressed by a work, the meaning of the work as a whole. What is the work about? thesis: The theme, meaning, or position that a writer undertakes to prove or support. tone: The manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude; the intonation of the voice that expresses meaning. Tone is described by adjectives, and the possibilities are nearly endless. Often a single adjective will not be enough, and tone may change from chapter to chapter or even line to line. Tone is the result of allusion, diction, figurative language, imagery, irony, symbol, syntax, and style — to cite only the relevant words in this glossary. Tone expresses the author's attitude toward his or her subject. Since there are as many tones in literature as there are tones of voice in real relationships, the tone of a literary work may be one of anger or approval, pride or pietythe entire gamut of attitudes toward life's phenomena. Tragedy: a type of drama which is pre-eminently the story of one person, the hero. The story depicts the trouble part of the hero's life in which a total reversal of fortune comes upon a person who formerly stood in high degree, apparently secure, sometimes even happy. The suffering and calamity in a tragedy are exceptional, since they befall a conspicuous person, e. g., Macbeth is a noble at first, then a king; Hamlet is a prince; Oedipus is a king. Moreover, the suffering and calamity spread far and wide until the whole scene becomes a scene of woe. The story leads up to and includes the death (in Shakespearean tragedy) or moral destruction (in Sophoclean tragedy) of the protagonist. Understatement: A statement which lessens or minimizes the importance of what is meant. hyperbole.

The opposite is